Her Final Plea

Kael did not return to his chambers that night.

He walked the corridors in silence each step slower than the last, his cloak brushing against the marble as if weighed by the air itself. The torches along the walls flickered, their light too warm for the cold inside him.

He had seen many things soldiers dying, children orphaned, the ruins of cities after war but nothing prepared him for what he had seen below.

He loved the laughter of children.

Their noise, their unguarded brightness. To him, even a palace full of scheming nobles felt bearable when a child’s laughter cut through the echoing halls.

And yet, tonight, he had watched one fade into silence.

By the time he reached the royal chambers, he no longer walked like the King’s aide.

He walked like a man carrying grief.

The guards opened the doors without a word. The King was seated by his desk, reading over the latest petitions, a candle burning low beside him.

Kael bowed, deeply but his voice, when it came, trembled.

"The medic says she won’t last longer, Your Majesty. The rotation is breaking her faster than the cell itself.”

His voice cracked mid sentence.

It startled even him.

The King looked up sharply not at the words, but at the sound. Kael’s voice was shaking, and in all the years he had served beside him, Eldric had never heard that.

"Kael…” the King said slowly, searching his face. “What happened?”

Kael turned away, his hand rising briefly to his mouth as if to steady himself. But his composure fractured again, a soft sound of frustration, then guilt.

“I visited her today,” he said, forcing his words out evenly. “I thought… since there was no trial today, perhaps she might rest. Perhaps the quiet would help her recover, even a little.”

He stopped, his jaw tightening.

"But Your Majesty…”

His voice trailed off. He pressed his fingers against his temple, breathing hard, as though speaking of it would bring it all back.

"She looked… gone. Not dead, but gone,” he said at last. “Like her soul had already accepted it. When I came close, she didn’t even flinch.

She just stared like she didn’t know whether I was real or another ghost in that place.”

The King’s brow furrowed, grief stirring behind his calm.

Kael’s hand fell to his side, shaking slightly. “I tried to speak.... told her she’d done well, that it would end soon. She smiled at that.” His tone hollowed. “But it wasn’t joy, or relief. It was the kind of smile people give when they’ve stopped believing.”

He turned his face away.

"Then she asked me—” his breath hitched “she asked, ‘Are you here to beat me too?’”

The words landed like a blade across the room.

Eldric froze. The parchment in his hand slipped soundlessly onto the desk.

Kael swallowed hard. “She didn’t even sound afraid, sire. Just… tired. Like she wouldn’t stop anyone who tried.”

He stepped closer to the desk, his voice unsteady again. “She spoke of the outside world asked how it looks now. I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say to someone who may never see it again.”

The King’s hand rose slowly to his mouth, covering it as though holding back both horror and shame.

"Kael…” he murmured, the name leaving him heavy, broken.

Kael bowed his head. “My King… I fear by the time we save her, it will already be too late.”

The silence that followed was absolute so deep that the faint crackle of the candlewick seemed cruelly loud.

Eldric turned away, staring out the tall window that framed the sleeping city. The lights below flickered in the fog like dying stars.

"Just tomorrow,” he whispered. “Tonight, and then one more dawn. And when the clock ends, we can save her." It was each count down was chipping away at him. Then he continued "But it seems before the days finishes they’ll call her guilty whether or not proof exists.”

Kael’s reply came through clenched teeth.

"The court expects her to die before the fifth day, Sire. Dead suspects can’t be questioned.”

The words lingered sharp, poisonous.

Eldric’s shoulders stiffened. His jaw worked once, twice.

Then, at last, he turned.

"Bring me the parchment,” he said.

Kael blinked, startled, then obeyed instantly, setting the thick parchment and golden royal seal upon the desk.

The King sat, and for a long moment, he said nothing.

The candlelight caught the lines beneath his eyes not weakness, but the exhaustion of restraint.

He opened a box beside him and took out a small golden card with the royal seal on it, its surface gleaming faintly.

Kael’s breath caught; he had seen this rarely in his life a royal summon used for dukes and war councils, not prisoners.

Eldric dipped the quill into ink that shimmered faintly under light, the color shifting like sunlight through tears.

Each stroke of his hand was deliberate, clean, measured, final each letter carrying the quiet authority that only he possessed.

No hesitation.

No doubt.

Only resolve.

The words were not titled Pardon.
Nor Order of Release.

He wrote four words that would change everything.

“Royal Summon – Emergency Audience”

Then, beneath them, he signed his name clear, neat, unmistakable the signature of a reigning king.

He set the card aside, letting the ink settle into the gold.

Next, he turned to the parchment.

This one he did not write quickly.
This was the 'Formal decree' the high order of authority that would override the court once the five days ended.

A directive stating that the prisoner known as Suzan would fall under the King’s personal custody, no further judgment required, no trial permitted to continue.

He signed the decree, then pressed the royal seal into the wax — the insignia of Eldis: a crown encircled by silver ivy.

It hardened quickly, the red deepening to the color of blood before cooling into royal scarlet.

To the outside world, the golden card would appear only as an emergency summon.

But within the palace, everyone knew what it truly meant:
the bearer was under the King’s direct protection.

No court, no minister, no general could touch them.

He lifted the card again, studying the faint glow between his fingers.

He murmured, “Just one more day. Please… survive.”

Kael’s throat tightened; for the first time in days, his expression softened.

“You’ll call her yourself then, Majesty?”

Eldric nodded slowly.

“At dawn after the fifth day. She will not return to that cell again.”

Kael bowed deeply, voice thick. “And if they refuse her release?”

The King’s gaze hardened a quiet fire behind his eyes.

“Let them think they’ve won, Kael. Let them mock my silence. But when they see this card in her hand, no voice will stand against her. No one will dare.”

Kael lowered his head. For a moment, the firelight caught the edge of a tear before he brushed it away; he felt relieved, finally.

Eldric saw it, though Kael thought he hadn’t.

He saw the grief, the helpless rage beneath the man’s composure and for the first time in years, the King felt the same.

The clock in the hall struck midnight.
The candle flickered low.

And between them, the golden card gleamed softly in the dark…

the last light of hope in a kingdom that had forgotten mercy.

*******

Morning crept in slow and pale, slipping through the barred window and cutting a faint stripe of gold across the cell floor.

The air hung heavy with damp stone and distant voices another day beginning above, as if the world had already forgotten the one buried beneath it.

When the guards came to check her cell, their usual laughter died in their throats.

Suzan, the girl who had been half dead in the corner the night before was sitting upright.

Not shaking.

Not crying.

Just… still.

Her hair fell around her face in tangled strands, and the faint traces of color had returned to her cheeks fragile proof that Kael’s touch of mana had done something.

But what truly startled them wasn’t that she lived it was that she looked alive in the wrong way,

Not healed. Not hopeful. Just calm. Too calm.

It wasn’t life they saw in her eyes.
It was quiet surrender.

“Orders say she’s to attend the hearing again,” one guard muttered, unlocking the door.

Another scoffed softly. “She can walk now? Guess the act’s over.”

Suzan heard the words she always did but didn’t react. She rose slowly, the sound of chains brushing against stone.

For once, they didn’t have to pull her up or drag her by the arms. She walked on her own and somehow, that made it worse.

That simple act standing, walking without stumbling unsettled them.
Because the silence that followed her steps wasn’t relief.

It was dread.

Even the cruelest among them fell quiet, unease settling like frost in their chests.

There was something unnatural about her stillness as though beneath that calm, she had already stepped beyond fear, beyond pain, beyond caring.

The fragile girl who had once pleaded for mercy now moved like someone who had already accepted her own ending.

The kinder among them watched in silence. The cruel ones exchanged smirks.

“See?” one sneered under his breath. “Told you she was faking to win pity.”

Another frowned. “That’s enough.”

Suzan didn’t hear the argument, or maybe she simply didn’t care. Her mind was somewhere far away not in this place of rusted locks and echoing steps.

Each footfall felt heavy, but deliberate.

Her gaze didn’t lift from the floor, yet there was an eerie steadiness to her movements, as though something inside her had gone still a storm finally burned out.

To the guards, she looked almost peaceful.

But to anyone who truly looked, there was something terrifying about that calm the kind that comes when someone has stopped believing rescue is possible.

When they passed the torchlight near the stairwell, it caught the faint shimmer of dried salt on her cheeks.

Tears that had fallen quietly through the night until there were none left to give.

She wasn’t strong.

She wasn’t brave.

She was simply… empty.

And sometimes, emptiness was enough to make a person move.

So she walked on her own pale, quiet, and unshaken through the dark corridors, through the whispering halls, through the weight of eyes that no longer saw her as a child.

Her steps were slow but steady, neither defiant nor broken, only resigned. Her chains echoing softly behind her the sound of a soul still clinging, barely, to the last fragile thread between survival and surrender.

When the doors opened, the court fell silent.

Suzan stepped in with the guards who weren't even holding her. The light from the tall windows caught her face, too pale for her age, too calm for what waited ahead.

Her chains brushed softly against the marble, each step echoing louder than her voice ever had.

She walked without resistance, without fear or maybe without anything left to feel.

At the center, she stopped. Head bowed, hands trembling faintly, she stood there like a shadow cast by someone no longer alive.

No one spoke.

Even the cruel ones watched in uneasy quiet.

For a moment, she seemed not a prisoner, but a ghost of what they had made her.

And then the lead judge rose.

The silence shattered.

A dozen quills scraped at once, parchments fluttered, boots shifted the sound of order preparing to deliver its verdict.

A clerk cleared his throat, voice cracking in the stillness. The nobles leaned forward, eyes bright with dread or morbid curiosity.

Suzan did not move. The faint tremor in her hands steadied, as if her body already knew what was coming.

The judges’ patience had long since dried to dust. With the endless day of nothing and the witnesses yesterday.

“There is nothing more to discuss,” said the lead judge, voice flat, brittle. “No relic found. No confession made. The court sees no further merit.”

The words didn’t register at first.

Suzan blinked slowly, her gaze unfocused, lips parting as if to ask what he’d said.

The hall murmured, restless, uneasy.

Another judge lifted a scroll, his tone mechanical, rehearsed. “The decision will be formalized this evening. Execution by morning.”

Everything stopped.

The ink on his parchment gleamed black. The air itself seemed to still.

Suzan’s breath hitched shallow, sharp like her body refused to understand what it had heard.

Her knees weakened. Her chains clattered against the marble floor like thunder in an empty hall. Her mouth opened but no sound came, only a faint, strangled gasp.

Then the meaning struck.

Her eyes went wide, her face twisting from disbelief to sheer horror.

She shook her head violently, backing away a step until the chains pulled her still.

“No…”

Her voice was a whisper at first disbelieving, almost childish.

Then louder.

“No… no, please— no!”

“Silence,” snapped a guard, gripping her shoulder.

But she didn’t stop. Couldn't.

“I didn’t do it!” she screamed, the words breaking apart like glass. “Please! I didn’t— I didn’t do anything—!”

Her cries filled every corner of the chamber, echoing against the high stone walls. The sound didn’t belong to a criminal it was a child’s cry, shattered and wild with fear.

“I didn’t! I swear, I didn’t! Don't do this to me!"

She grabbed at her hair, shaking her head again and again, as though she could shake the words out of existence.

Her body trembled violently. Her voice rose, cracked, shattered.

“Please, I didn’t do anything! Don’t kill me— please no!”

Enough!” the lead judge snapped, his voice cracking from strain more than authority.

But the command only broke what little composure she had left.

Her scream ripped through the silence raw, pleading, unguarded.

Her voice grew loud, shrill echoing through the chamber raw and desperate, rising to a pitch that made even the cruelest guard flinch.

Her knees hit the marble with a dull crack. The chains rattled as she leaned forward, trembling hands pressed to the cold floor.

“Please…” she whispered between sobs, voice fading. “I didn’t want anything… I didn’t hurt anyone… please…”

Her chains dragged as she tried to crawl closer to the judges’ bench reach for them, for the nobles, for anyone one inch, then another hands trembling so badly the chains rattled like wind in a storm before the guard’s hand caught her shoulder again and yanked her back.

Her eyes darted wildly searching every face for mercy, for someone to speak, to stop it.

But the nobles looked away.

Some out of guilt.

Most out of cowardice.

Even the cruelest guards averted their eyes for a moment.

The hall had gone so quiet that her sobs seemed to echo from the walls themselves.

“Get her out,” the old guard barked, voice hard to hide his own unease.

“No!” she screamed again, struggling weakly. “Please— don’t take me! I’ll do anything. please don’t let them— anyone!”

But no one moved.

No one spoke.

Her voice cracked one last time, dissolving into a hoarse sob as the guards pulled her up by the chains and dragged her away.

Even then, she kept crying out, reaching toward the faces that refused to meet her eyes.

"Someone... believe me… please…”

Her pleas lingered long after the doors slammed shut.

They hung in the air like ghosts clinging to every corner of the chamber.

The judges stared at their hands.

The nobles looked to the floor.

The scribes paused mid sentence, unable to continue.

For a long, long time, the only sound was the echo of her pleas still trembling through the marble.

And when the gavel finally fell heavy, final—

it felt less like justice and more like a grave being sealed.

Author's note

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